Help! I Don't Belong in Slytherin!
by mefrie
Summary: When Amber, a fifth year transfer student from America, is sorted into Slytherin, she believes a mistake has been made. Surely she belongs in Gryffindor? How far will she go to convince Dumbledore she qualifies for ReSorting? R&R? Please?
1. Chapter 1: Forest and Unicorn

**A/N: My first-ever story! Please Read and Review. I'll be updating about once per week. This story starts in November of Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts.**

**Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. No money is being made.**

**Chapter 1: Forest and Unicorn**

"Gods, Care of Magical Creatures was awful today, wasn't it?"

The speaker was a petite blonde named Pansy Parkinson. She had a cute upturned nose, but the expression on her face was habitually hard. She was not one to cross and all of us nodded in agreement with her, though I, for one, did not think Professor Hagrid's lesson had been all that bad.

Sure, it would've been nice if I could have _seen_ the thestrels rather than just heard about them, and maybe Hagrid wasn't the most eloquent speaker in the world, but I couldn't see that he merited the amount of abuse my fellow Slytherins had been heaping upon his teaching ever since that afternoon. Of course, I'd only met the man once, and everyone else here had endured his class for the past two years, so maybe they knew something I didn't.

"I wish Professor Grubbly-Plank was staying," said Tracey Davis sadly. "Remember last year when she brought us the baby unicorns?"

A sort of collective wistful sigh echoed around the room. And, fifteen-year-old girls or not, these were not the sort of people I'd have pegged as wistful sigh-ers. I watched with interest as Pansy's hard face softened, and Tracey's eyes grew distant and misty. Even Millicent Bulstrode, the resident hag, looked halfway decent when her eyes went all wide with recalled wonder, and Daphne Greengrass (the prettiest girl in the dorm besides myself) became darn near beautiful when she let her shiny lips part like that, not that I was interested in girls or anything…. I looked around to see that Pansy had noticed me watching all of them.

"I forgot," she said, her face gone hard again, "Amber wasn't here last year. She didn't see the unicorns."

Amber is my name, Amber Lyonness. What my parents were thinking when they gave me said name, I don't know. Well… yes I do. It was my mother. She's always been one for theatrical gestures- she once confided to me that half the reason she'd married my father was because she liked his last name so much. Her own name, which she hated, was the perfectly ordinary "Mary". Her maiden name had been Smith.

And I have to admit that Amber suits me. It's descriptive. My hair and eyes are both the same rich, honey-like blend of orange, red, brown, and gold as the stone for which I am named. Sometimes in the sunlight my entire head seems to blaze golden. Right now, in the flickering firelight of the underground Slytherin common room, the red in my hair was predominant.

"No, I've never seen one outside of books," I answered Pansy. "We don't have them in America."

America. How I missed it, and I'd only been gone two weeks! Most of my discomfort was because Hogwarts and the UK were **nothing** like I'd expected. I felt that I was homesick nearly as much for my lost Scottish dream-world as for the Land of the Free I'd left behind.

You see, I wasn't supposed to be where I was right now; I wasn't supposed to be with these people, these companions. I wasn't a Slytherin, dammit!

I wondered again how things could have gone so badly wrong. The Sorting was supposed to have been a simple formality. My mother had assured me I'd get into her old house, Gryffindor. After all, weren't we both descendants of Godric Gryffindor through her mother's bloodline? I'd transferred over here with firm expectations of being a Gryffindor like my mom.

I even looked like a lion, what with my golden eyes and red-gold hair (which my mother used to sometimes jokingly refer to as my "mane"). Heck, my patronus was a mountain lion (not as good as a genuine African lion like my mother's, but close enough). It was unthinkable that I was now residing in the House of the Snake. I knew I was brave. So what if I told a lie or two occasionally? Doesn't everyone? What was the problem?

Maybe I hadn't killed a basilisk or single-handedly defeated Voldemort like famous Harry Potter, the quintessential Gryffindor according to my mother (besides herself, of course), but, really, not everyone in the House had "brave deeds to their name", did they? I mean, surely there wouldn't be enough basilisks to go around? And anyway, Potter hadn't even done most of those things until he got into Gryffindor. It was so unfair!

My mother wasn't currently speaking to me, convinced that I'd somehow spent the first fourteen years of my life hiding my evil, villainous nature from her and my father. Dad had contacted me only once in the past two weeks, and the conversation had been distant and stilted.

I suppose I sort of understood their attitudes. After all, they'd crossed the ocean to fight the very people whose children I was now hobnobbing with. Mother was from the UK, originally. She'd been in school here at Hogwarts when Lord Voldemort began his first rise to power, but had graduated in time to join a society dedicated to causing his downfall and fight against him.

She used to love to tell me stories of those times. She'd go on for hours, until I almost believed that I'd been there with her and her best friend, Lily Evans, running around battling the Death Eaters with Lily's soon-to-be husband and his three friends, all of whom, to hear Mother tell it, had been in love with herself. She said the only reason she hadn't married any of them was that she'd dedicated her life to fighting evil and didn't want to cheat any of "the boys" out of her fullest love. Of course, she then met my father and his irresistible last name…. Anyway, the point was that all of them had been in Gryffindor.

And now I wasn't.

I looked around at my fellow Slytherins, my expression slightly twisted by the loathing I felt for them. Unfortunately, this only made me appear to fit in there. I gave myself a mental shake; negative emotions wouldn't help me.

I had to do something, take some action, so I could stop thinking about the past. Action—something bold and heroic. Something Gryffindor-like! Yeah, that was it! Maybe if I **acted** brave enough, they'd see that a mistake had been made and put me in Gryffindor where I belonged.

I jumped up. "Come on, girls, what are you waiting for? Let's go!"

"Go?" Daphne echoed in amazement. "It's ten-thirty in the evening. Where on earth do you want to go at this time of night?"

"Maybe she has a boyfriend," sniggered Tracey Davis. "No, she'd hardly want us to come along for _that_—or would you, Amber?" The room dissolved into laughter.

Oops. I had forgotten that none of them had been privy to my thoughts of the last couple seconds. Sometimes my mind just worked too split-second fast for others to comprehend.

"I've never seen a unicorn, and I want to," I explained patiently. "So let's go." That shut them up quite effectively.

"But, Amber," Tracey ventured after a few seconds, twisting her mouse-brown hair nervously around her finger as she spoke, "All the unicorns around here are in the Forbidden Forest."

"Yes, and it's conveniently close to the castle," I said helpfully.

"Oh, this is ridiculous!" That from Pansy. "We are so not going into the Forbidden Forest at night!"

"Well, they'll hardly let us go during the daytime, will they?" I pointed out reasonably. "Our only option is to sneak out."

"I heard there are werewolves in there," came a soft and husky voice from behind me. I looked around in surprise. Millicent Bulstrode rarely spoke.

"The full moon is weeks away," I reassured her. "We won't be meeting any werewolves tonight. And they aren't supposed to be roaming around free anyway; I doubt if there are ever really any of them in there at all."

It took a lot more logic and convincing, and a little bit of bullying— I'm ashamed to say I lost my temper once or twice—but eventually the five of us were on our way to find a unicorn.

**A/N: My first-ever fic! Please r&r. I'll be updating about once per week**, **if people review. All it takes is one review to make me happy... it can even be a stupid review, I don't care!**


	2. Chapter 2: Unicorn and Spider

**A/N: My first-ever story! Please Read and Review. I'll be updating about once per week. This story starts in November of Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts.**

**Wow, people reviewed! So I'm adding the second part ahead of schedule; easy, 'cause it was already written…. Thank you for reviewing!**

**Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. No money is being made.**

**Chapter 2: Unicorn and Spider**

The path into the Forbidden Forest was soooo much darker than I had anticipated it would be. And spookier. There were weird rustling noises in the woods all around us, and sounds as though very large animals were moving in the undergrowth right outside the small circle of light provided by my wand.

After we'd walked for about five minutes, eerie howls joined the symphony of night noises, and even more unnerving, some of them were now coming from **behind** us. I tried not to wonder if this meant we were cut off from the castle. From the look on her face, Daphne, who was walking beside me, was wondering the same thing.

When we reached a small clearing a couple of minutes later, I called a halt. "Let's do it here," I said. I didn't want to risk going any deeper into the Forbidden Forest. "Now, how exactly does one go about calling a unicorn?"

Daphne giggled; the girlishly high and cruel sound seemed out of place in the deep darkness. "You have to have a virgin," she explained. "Good thing we brought Millicent along, isn't it? Unless you've finally managed to seduce Gregory Goyle, Millicent?" Millicent blushed, her entire ugly face turning an unattractive dull brick red. "I thought not," Daphne continued shrilly. "Millicent's been mooning over Gregory for years and years, but somehow he's just never succumbed to her charms…"

Pansy and Tracey were staring at Daphne in disbelief. The girls of Slytherin house might mock nearly everyone else in the school, but they always stuck together and defended each other. Always. It must be fear that was making Daphne behave this way. Fear. Yes. As someone who aspired to Gryffindor, I couldn't let fear rule me. I stepped forward.

"I'm a virgin," I declared. "Show me what to do."

"Erm," said Tracey, "I don't think you actually have to be a virgin, you just have to sort of, um, think pure thoughts—you know, sort of project them… oh, and you have to be sitting down, so as not to frighten the unicorn…"

"Oh," said Daphne, sounding embarrassed. I think she'd only just realized how hysterical she'd been a moment ago. "Well, um, virgins can't hurt, can they? I thought I'd read…"

"No, virgins can't hurt our chances at all," said Pansy, taking charge. "Amber, you and Millicent sit here on the ground, and Daphne and I will just step back a little this way, and…" her voice trailed off as she looked over at Tracey, who sat down on my other side without saying a word.

"Right then," said Pansy briskly. "Now let's all think pure thoughts."

We were there for long enough that I considered calling it all off and going back to the castle. Indeed, I was amazed that one of the others hadn't suggested it already. I wasn't about to be the first to speak, though, so we continued to sit until it happened…

The unicorn stepped forward, trembling. It was gorgeous, a gleaming white so bright that it appeared to glow, and much larger than I had realized it would be from the pictures I'd seen in books. It stood at the edge of the clearing for a moment, and then slowly advanced as we all held perfectly still. I thought of pure snow just as hard as I could.

The unicorn walked right up to me and laid its head in my lap! I was beyond amazed. I carefully lifted one hand and stroked its smooth, velvety-soft forehead. It lay down on the ground beside me, and Tracy and Millicent dared to caress it also.

Now I could see why the other girls hadn't given up! This was worth waiting for.

"What do I do now?" I whispered aloud.

"You've captured it," Tracey said softly. "It trusts you now and will stay with you until you release it, so it should be safe for Pansy and Daphne to come over." The two moved close enough to sink onto the ground next to the beautiful beast and begin petting it. The unicorn uttered a loud whinny, which alarmed us, until we heard an answering higher-pitched noise from outside the clearing.

"She has a foal!" Millicent said, her homely face shining with delight. The baby unicorn pranced out into sight. It was entirely golden, hooves, horn, hair, and all, and much less shy than its mother had been. It romped around, letting everyone play with it a little. Its presence seemed to relax the mother unicorn even more, and eventually all of us relaxed enough to begin talking quietly.

"Are you really still a virgin, Amber?" Pansy asked. I couldn't believe that she sounded so disbelieving!

"Well, there was this one guy, back in America, my boyfriend… we went pretty far, but we never actually, you know…" I blushed. "So, um, you really have?" I was, I admit it, insanely curious. All my American friends and I had talked about what it might be like, but none of us had actually done it.

"Well, _yeah_," answered Pansy as though I'd asked an incredibly stupid question. Her tone of voice made the unicorn in my lap start a little.

"With, um, Draco?" I asked. Draco was her incredibly hot blonde boyfriend with no brains whatsoever—but plenty of money. He was so attractive that I'd asked Tracey if he had Veela blood after I first met him. The answer was no, of course, he was from one of those incredibly old wizarding families that cared about pure blood and all that nonsense. They must have been inbred, too; the boy was doing something stupid practically every time I saw him.

It was probably rude to ask who with, but she'd brought it up. Oh, now I was getting bad mental images, gaak! I was never going to be able to look either of them in the face again!

"Of course," said Pansy coolly. "Draco and I have been going out for three years, and it seemed like the logical thing to do. I don't want him looking at other girls, after all." Her matter-of-fact tone astounded me. She didn't seem to fancy him at all! _Any means to achieve their ends_, I thought with a shudder. The mother unicorn snorted softly.

"So, did you just do it… once, or what?" I asked. Hey, she seemed willing to talk! The other girls were paying close enough attention that I thought they might not have heard all the details before either.

"No, we try at least once a week," Pansy responded. Seeing the looks on our faces she quickly added, "try and find a time to do it, I mean; we have to wait until Vincent, Theodore, Blaise and Gregory are out of his dorm and Draco is sure they're not coming back or anything. We usually manage about twice a month."

"How is it? Do you like it?" Tracey pushed.

"It's not like anything, really. It's messy, though, and the charms you have to cast beforehand are annoying and take way too long, but it's actually pretty quick."

Daphne choked and had a horrible coughing fit just then, and I, who was closest to her, could have sworn I heard the words "twitchy little ferret" embedded within the coughs, though I had no idea what they meant.

We talked for a bit longer, but after a while we remembered that we wanted to get at least a couple of hours' sleep before classes the next morning. I asked the unicorn to please get up, and she did. My legs had fallen asleep and I had to get help from Millicent to stand, and then I hopped around for a few moments while circulation returned to them in painfully ticklish pinpricks of feeling.

After I finished dancing around like a madwoman, I told the unicorn that I released her, and she was free to go. It was as if a spell had been lifted; her comfort with us immediately vanished. She backed away quickly, and snorted to her young one to follow. She began trembling again, just as she had when she'd first approached, but she didn't turn and run. It probably would have been better for her if she had.

We were all backing away so as not to miss seeing even the very last glimpse of our inspiring magical mother unicorn and her sweet fuzzy golden baby, so we all saw it happen. The unicorn had just turned to enter the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing from whence she'd come when a huge black shape dropped upon her from the tree above. The unicorn let out a horrible squeal!

We all saw simultaneously that it was a giant spider, huge as a nightmare come to life. Its monstrous legs were wrapped completely around the mother unicorn, who had collapsed to the ground, one of her legs sticking out at an unnatural angle. She'd managed to impale the spider with her horn, but he was so large I doubted it would kill him.

There was no thought involved as we all drew wands in defense of our friend.

"Impedimenta! Stupefy! Stupefy! Impedimenta!" The spells were simply bouncing off the horrific beast!

"Expecto Patronum!" I called up the patronus my mother had taught me last year, and in a streak of silvery golden glory the mountain lion flew past me, the sight of him lifting my spirits as it always did. But even that was no use; his incorporeal claws simply slashed through the spider without damaging it at all, so I called him back to me. I noticed as I did so that the stab wound from the unicorn's horn was healing up as the spider drank her blood.

If the spider continued to drink the unicorn's blood it would soon achieve short-term invulnerability--if it had not reached that point already. We had to act quickly!

"Stop!" I yelled to my fellow Slytherins. "Stun with me on three! One! Two! Three-- Stupefy!" All five of us performed the spell at pretty much the same time, and at last, it had an effect; the giant spider lifted its ugly face from its meal and regarded us. I saw with stunned sorrow the mother unicorn's head droop limply when the spider released it, her eyes glazed with unmistakable death.

As the spider climbed off its prey, I realized we might be in trouble. The thing looked capable of moving _fast_. Then I saw where its gaze was directed.

The baby unicorn was just a few yards away from its mother. Its fuzzy golden head was lowered, horn pointed towards its mother's killer. It pawed the ground with its diminutive front hoof, readying itself for the attack. That tiny baby was about to charge right into the jaws of the monstrous spider!

Acting on pure instinct, I pointed my wand. "Accio baby unicorn!" I screamed. With a thud, the baby hit my chest almost before I'd had time to get my wand out of the way. I closed my arms around it.

"Run!" I screamed. And we ran.

**A/N: I'll be updating about once per week**, **if people review. Remember, all it takes is one (new) review to make me happy... it can even be a stupid review, I don't care! Thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3: Castle and Dilemma

**A/N: Thanks for reviewing, now I can post the third chapter! I said I didn't mind bad reviews, so I guess you felt free to post 'em, huh? Well, I still don't mind, keep 'em coming! In answer to a couple of them, though…**

**SeeStar: I don't really think everyone is happy in the house they are sorted into-- there are some people who aren't going to be happy no matter_ where _they are. Many people actually don't like _themselves_—don't like their own "purest personality traits", y'know? Eventually the story will address this. And just because my character thinks Slytherin is evil doesn't mean that I do.**

**AngelFaerieGirl: Thank you for the constructive criticism. I really appreciate that you took the time to read in such detail! I'm really just writing for me, though, so even if I make her a Mary Sue thingy, if it makes me happy, I don't care! **

**Amber is an American for a lot of reasons. I wanted to start the story out in fifth year, and since Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in the UK, she had to be in some other country for the first four and a half, right? America is easy for me to write b/c I'm from the US and I write and talk American English, and as it's in first-person, it just makes it simpler. Since the story is just for fun, I don't wanna have to do any research on other cultures or anything, other than rereading the HP books, lol. As for her hair… actually, I have hair that is exactly that color, but in RL, I call it red or strawberry blond and my eyes hazel. If I look in the mirror and actually name all the colors that I see in them though, or were going to paint them, those are the colors that are truly in there. For real, look at a red-head's hair sometime, unless it is Weasley red, you'll notice it's not really red at all. And the mom's background is going to turn out to be completely necessary. There's a whole thing with Peter Pettigrew… read on and you'll find out! **

**Okay, now that the author notes are almost as long as than the update, it's time for a:**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize. No money is being made.**

**Chapter 3: Castle and Dilemma**

Somehow we made it out of the Forbidden Forest.

Probably the spider was too bloated from the mother unicorn's blood to bother with us, but still we ran as though the thing was two feet behind us the entire way. After all, there could have been another one.

We stopped when we reached the castle doors. The run had burned all the adrenaline from the fight right out of me, and I stood shivering, hugging the baby unicorn to my chest. I still didn't feel quite safe, but the other girls weren't acting as if they expected the beast to have been able follow us this far.

Possibly there was some sort of ward that kept the more dangerous inhabitants of the forest from mingling with the students. At any rate, it certainly seemed a good idea after what we'd just witnessed. I resolved to look it up in "Hogwarts, A History" at earliest opportunity, as a positive answer would greatly enhance my ability to sleep at night.

As I pondered possible wards and the magic they might involve, Daphne stopped panting long enough to observe the burden I held in my arms.

"You've still got the baby unicorn!" she accused. At least, it sounded like an accusation to me, and I responded rather sarcastically.

"What did you expect me to do, Daphne? Throw him to the spider so I could run faster?" Unspoken were the words, "Like you probably would have?" but we could all sense them in my tone of voice nonetheless.

I was rather shocked at what had come out of my own mouth. I didn't in a million years actually believe Daphne would throw a baby unicorn to an evil spider, and yet, on some level, that was exactly what I _did_ believe. Wasn't that what Slytherins did, after all? Saved themselves at the expense of others?

Pansy stepped in. "Well, we can't keep him. Let him go, Amber, so we can all get to bed," she said bossily.

This angered me even more than Daphne's tone of voice had. I opened my mouth to reply and Tracey, who was standing beside me, touched my arm. I shut my mouth.

"We can't just put him back in the Forest, Pansy," Tracey pointed out much more calmly than I would have. "He lost his mother only a few minutes ago. That spider could still get him!" Her voice rose at the end as she remembered the frightening scene, and the rest of us hurriedly shushed her. The last thing we needed was someone finding us all outside the castle carrying an animal we could only have gotten from the Forbidden Forest.

"I didn't think about that," admitted Pansy in a subdued tone. "I just want to go to bed and forget tonight ever happened, you know? That poor unicorn…" she trailed off.

I decided I'd been silent long enough. "Well, what can we do about her baby?" I demanded.

"We c-can't keep it." Millicent Bulstrode said hesitantly.

"Why not? Students are allowed to have pets." I said belligerently. I knew this was stupid reasoning, but at this point I was so riled up that I just wanted to argue with someone.

"Yeah, but just little things like cats and toads, not big horses. And besides, unicorns aren't pets, they're wild animals. It should be with other unicorns," Daphne said. This touched off a stream of concerns from everyone else.

"Will other unicorns even take care of it?" "What do unicorns do in the wild, anyways?"

"Bowtruckles won't take care of their babies after humans touch them—the smell is wrong and it scares them."

"Oh, but surely _unicorns_ aren't like that, I mean, they're really smart…"

"Are there even other unicorns in there to find it?" "Do they live in herds or what?"

"What if that spider ate them all?"

We soon realized that none of us actually knew too much about unicorn life in the wild. "You're the ones who had them in class, not me," I said crossly to the other girls.

"Yeah, but who was actually paying attention to the teacher when we had a unicorn to look at?" Pansy pointed out. "And they mostly teach you stuff like what they eat and how to take care of one once it's in captivity, not what they do when they're out on their own."

"What about our textbook?" Tracey asked. "Maybe it could tell us?"

"Excellent idea. Run in there and fetch it out for us, Tracey," ordered Pansy. Of course, Tracey protested Pansy's peremptory tone, which set off a whole other argument, and in the end it was the much put-upon Millicent who ended up sneaking back to our dorms for a copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them._

But we were sorely disappointed by the contents of the slim paperback volume, which proved to contain **_exactly_** what the title advertised- and no more.

"There's nothing in here!" Daphne declared exasperatedly. " 'Found throughout the forests of northern Europe- pah! What good is this rubbish? It's not even two paragraphs long!"

By now the excitement from the flight was long gone, drained away by the long minutes of indecision outside the castle. We were simply five extremely tired and increasingly snappish teenage girls, standing around in our nightclothes and sneakers in the chill November air. And my arms ached abominably. The baby unicorn was _heavy_.

I didn't put it down, though.

The letdown suddenly hit me twice as hard as it had previously, after our run. Merlin, what had I been thinking with this little venture, anyway? If it hadn't been for me, the mother unicorn might still be alive!

"Amber, are you all right? You're shaking!" Daphne broke off her diatribe against the author ("Seventy years in print and _this_ is all the geezer knows!") to exclaim. Through the mental fog that was descending upon me—gods, why did my little ventures always turn out this way? What was _wrong_ with me? Why wasn't I more like my mother?—I heard Pansy tell Daphne I was only cold, we all were. "No," Daphne responded sharply, "she's turning _grey_, Pansy, look at her—"

At that point my knees buckled and I started to fall, and they all surrounded me, supported me. They tried to take the baby unicorn from me, but I wouldn't let go, and as it seemed to have no inclination to escape my arms, they left it there and began the laborious task of trying to sneak the both of us inside.

Millicent had to practically carry me, as my legs didn't seem to want to work. I could hear Pansy and Daphne up ahead frantically discussing in whispers the spells that would be needed to hide the presence of the unicorn, interspersed with questions about unicorn facts they weren't sure of. ("We'll need an Imperturbable charm now, tonight, to mask the noise." "Do they make much noise?" "Horse noises, I think…")

To Tracey had fallen the unenviable task of shushing me. Did I mention that I was sobbing softly and incoherently the entire time? The horrible, crushing sense of guilt I felt was getting stronger by the minute. Everything seemed to be too much for me to handle or even take in- the voices and the bright torches on the corridor walls overwhelmed me. I was, I admit it, completely falling apart.

"Should still be alive…" I muttered, my head buried in the baby's soft golden coat. It didn't seem to mind, in fact I had the distinct feeling that it approved of my sadness and was, of course, mourning with me, and mourning even more deeply than I was, for it had lost its only mother… "I should have b-been able to stop that monster!" I growled, my anger trailing off into another small sob. I must have gotten a little loud, for Tracey looked alarmed. "Sssshh, Amber!" she said yet again. "We're almost there. We're almost safe."

But safety, it seemed, was not destined to be one of the redeeming features of this night. We were just beginning to descend the stairs of the dungeon, when, below us on the landing outside the portrait hole, a light flipped on. A solitary figure regarded our small group with interest.

"Well, what have we here?"

It was Draco Malfoy.

**A/N: Please review! I like reviews, just so I know that someone read the thing! I don't care what you think, but if you write something of substance I'll reply thoughtfully to you in the next chapter! Thank you!**


	4. Chapter 4: Draco and Disovery

**A/N: Woah, I lost my password and email and stuff for a long time, then later when I found it I like, didn't feel like writing this anymore, but all of a sudden I do! So I did! Will you review it?**

**Disclaimer: I'm not making any money and nothing you recognize is mine!**

Chapter 4: Draco and Discovery 

Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey and Millicent Bulstrode (who was still carrying me and the baby unicorn) all stopped dead at the top of the Slytherin stairwell.

Draco Malfoy silently regarded us from the landing.

At first glance, the slim blonde figure below didn't look like someone who would inspire such frozen terror on our part. He stood there calmly, without any hint of anger or malice in his face or posture. If anything, he looked… interested.

And it was this very interest which made the icy fingers of dread curl throughout my midsection. For Draco Malfoy liked to know things, loved to find things out. And he was good at it, too. From what I'd heard in the short time I'd been here at Hogwarts, it was a family trait. The Malfoys practically lived by the old maxim "Knowledge is Power," and certainly Draco got much of his knowledge of events outside Hogwarts from his parents. He was in almost daily communication with them via his large eagle owl, and they sent him letters, newspaper clippings, and care packages that were rumoured to contain more than cookies. House gossip had it that, thanks to his father's connections, he knew more about current events in the Ministry of Magic than most of its own employees did.

So…five Slytherin girls turning up outside the portrait hole at three in the morning, with dirty, disheveled nightclothes, mud-splattered sneakers, and one of them-- me-- in a state of nervous collapse and clutching an infant unicorn?

Pretty much Christmas a month early, for Malfoy.

If all Draco did was collect other people's secrets, however, we wouldn't have been so scared. Half of Slytherin House fancied themselves junior spymasters. What made Draco so dangerous to us was that Draco liked to TELL what he knew. To whom, it didn't matter. If he wasn't supposed to tell a secret, he'd tell it to Crabbe and Goyle.

This weakness-- this pleasure he took in making sure everyone else knew what he knew first— was what made him do so many of the stupid things I mentioned earlier. But it didn't make him any less dangerous to us in this moment; if anything, the danger was worse.

Because Draco like telling what he knew even more… if it would hurt someone.

I do believe Draco sensed our fear. A predatory gleam entered his eye. Slowly, like a cat toying with his prey, he took one step forward. As one unit, the girls backed away exactly one step. Encouraged, Draco began climbing the stairs towards up, smiling as though nothing was wrong.

This fresh crisis had mostly cleared my head. I felt weak and shaky, but I was thinking lucidly and I whispered to Millicent to let me stand up, which she did.

Draco had reached the top of the stairs.

An unmistakable lilt of pleasure ran through Draco's voice, swirling lazily like the eddy of a stream as he addressed himself to his beautiful girlfriend, "Why, Pansy, where on earth have you been? I've been waiting for you half the night." The bastard sounded as though he was discussing the day's lesson. He was toying with us.

For one long moment, Pansy was silent, unable to reply to his inane pleasantry. I thought the farce would end right then, and braced for it.

And then Pansy rallied. She courageously took Her voice became warm and caring, practically a verbal caress, as she crooned back at Draco.

"And I'm so glad you did, Draco. We need your help. Amber is hurt."

But, skilled as she was at hiding it, Pansy was still rattled. Her opening volley had been a mistake, not in tone, but in choice of subject.

Draco slowly turned his gaze up to meet mine. As the impact of those cold, steel-grey beams hit me, I shuddered.

I realized now that standing on my own two feet had been a mistake. I didn't look hurt anymore.

Draco didn't like me. We'd gotten off on the wrong foot. He'd overheard me asking Daphne if he had Veela blood (but, oh, reader, if you'd been there you too would have asked… he was so hot, in that feline, nearly feminine way that nearly always does mean Veela!) and apparently his family was so old and blue-blooded that any hint of "impure" blood was a mortal offense. I had no doubt that if I'd been a guy, we would have fought a duel that very night. As it was, I was certain he'd never forgive me.

All of which didn't make it very likely that he'd hold off "telling" simply because I needed help.


End file.
